Spring time in Shanghai is looking so different this time.
Varying forms of lockdowns are going on around the city as the local government tries to find ways to curb the rising number of COVID-19 infections from Omicron. We have also done several nucleic acid testing within our apartment compound as well as antigen tests.
Kids have gone to virtual learning and are past the 1-month mark now. My office have switched to working from home almost the same time as my kids did as a precaution. Fortunately, we did so at the right time because some colleagues were on swift action lockdowns.
I cannot help but look back and say how I have been grateful for even those little things before my side of the city went on full lockdown.
- My daughter had an accident with her laptop and can’t be grateful enough that Apple Store helped to get it fixed right before the lockdown
- I was able to go and buy some food even if some store shelves were running low (unfortunately we were duped into believing it will only be a 4-day lockdown)
- Being able to enjoy the nice Spring weather even for a few minutes whenever we needed to go down for our NAT (nucleic acid test)
- And changing where I worked allowed me to have a view
- I brought home my work hard drive while another colleague had taken all others’ home, so we were not suddenly scrambling to find files
- Being able to buy food although everything has gotten horrendously expensive!
Before the “great lockdown”
Life in lockdown
With this lockdown, I approached it with a new frame of mind with lessons learned from our 2020 lockdown. So living in a small flat with tweens has been a different experience this time… better I would say.
We have been given 2 sets of food by the local community leaders. And since I don’t typically buy celtuce, I had to go on a Pinterest rabbit hole to find recipes. Likewise with radishes. And with my stock of flour nearly gone, I had to find recipes of bread with using less flour. I managed to find a type of flour used for making dumpling skins. I am going to be on a discovery adventure to see how it fares in bread. And another thing I need to go in search of is homemade mayonnaise.
New mantra: Stay Negative. Stay Positive.
